voice is numb try to scream out my lungs
by donutworry
Summary: "You can't just eat the neighborhood pets because they annoy you."


**It's May 10th! Happy Bonkai Day!**

A 6.22 tragicomic redo. Title from the song "Moments" by One Direction.

TW: self-harm, depression, self-delusion, Kai has severe Lima syndrome, freestyle writing

* * *

The air in Portland is denser, darker with toxin than the bumpkin-hamlet oxygen Mystic Falls sports. Regardless, the sprawling hipster city _feels_ better, doesn't weigh Kai down with the kind of aura that reflects all the bad juju the small town attracts. But Portland is heavier not only from pollution but from the baggage Kai carts about as he looks over an urban jungle he barely recognizes and thinks about the woman in his car.

What's he supposed to do now?

* * *

The sun hurts his eyes, stinging his newborn vampire senses. He can use magic to protect himself from star's disregard, but he has no other choice but to adjust to the odd levels of sensitivity. Rustling in the backseat catches his attention, the hexed young woman in the backseat shifting positions in her rest. He watches her in the review intently, only looking back to the road when she seems to settle down with a soft grumble.

With his teeth, Kai opens a package of cool ranch Doritos he pulls out of a plastic bag near him. He wonders what one Damon Salvatore will do once he realizes one Elena Gilbert is still cursed. Will he come back for Bonnie? To save her or to finish her off? What will he do when he realizes that the Bennett girl and the Parker boy are gone? Track them down or cut his losses?

These are all very exciting questions. The flavored tortilla chips lose their crunch as he chews them, staring once more at the sleeping young woman in the backseat, lingering over her brown skin, the rise and fall of her breasts with each breath, the pretty lines of her face. Kai licks his lips, tasting the salty seasoning in his flesh, and looks away.

He hopes Damon comes. He hopes by the time the older vampire arrives, Kai can show him exactly what it looks like to have a Bennett witch against you.

* * *

He goes to the family farm in lieu of returning to his childhood home. Last time he was there, after merging with Luke, it had been a jarring reminder of how little he'd been wanted. Having no desire to delve into _that_ particular sort of introspection, Kai drives right past the house and continues the next twenty miles to the farmhouse.

As a kid, Kai had loved it there. It was where the coven grew vegetation for magic by the assload, and he had loved exploring all the sprawling acreage. When he got older, he found the marijuana and peyote patches and that had only enhanced his adoration of the place. It was the only place he can recall feeling included, as harvest time required as many hands as possible and not even Joshua Parker thought Kai could do any harm as a farmer (he was wrong, but whatever).

It doesn't take him long to unpack once they arrive - the only thing he has to bring inside is the woman slung over his shoulder. Once he settles her on the couch, he takes one last look at her sleeping facade before snapping his fingers.

"Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!"

* * *

Her initial response is to scream and throw the coffee table center piece at him. Her second is to run away, but one advantage of this disgusting vampire thing?

The speed.

Kai's blocking Bonnie's path before she can even get to the hallway, her eyes widening as she skids to a stop and falls on her ass. It's hilarious and Kai keeps laughing even as she scoots back to her feet and runs the opposite way.

He can her heart racing, can smell her fear in her sweat. It spices the air with the smell of her and abruptly, Kai's chuckling cuts short as dark veins wriggle beneath his eyes, a macabre mask.

This time, when he catches up to her, she's tugging open the back door. A cry erupts from her lips as he bands one arm around her petite waist and tugs her back. The other hand pushes the door shut before joining it's partner in subduing Bonnie.

"Let me go!"

The witch kicks out, trying to struggle free, but Kai has magic and super strength and rumbling hunger on his side.

"Don't wiggle so much," he manages to grunt before burying his fangs in her neck.

* * *

Bonnie keeps wiggling and struggling, her capitulation only coming when he'd drank so much that she's groggy and passing out. He pulls away and shoves his own blood down her throat at that point, and he feels grateful that she latches on and _pulls_. She might hate him, but she wants to live, so much so that she's willing to ingest him into her system.

It's kind of hot.

She's lax as hell when he carts her upstairs to one of the guest rooms and lays her down on the bed. Kai bends over to lick the last of the blood off her neck. The pulse beneath his tongue and the semi-intimate position brings to mind the fantasy of her under him, writhing around for an altogether different reason and he has to swallow back a groan.

"Sweet dreams, Bonster," he coos in her ear. " _Somnias._ "

The Bennett which sleeps until the morning.

* * *

By that time, he's already casted the house, made it impossible for her to leave or use magic within a certain range. Kai wonders how frustrated she'll be when she tries to escape only to find she can't make it down the driveway. There's probably good money in betting that she'll do her best to kill him. He hums while he flips the omelette, keeping an ear out for the woman upstairs.

He spent most of his time yesterday shopping. He needed to stock up on food and none of the clothes here were to his satisfaction. Bonnie was smaller than most of the women in his family, definitely smaller than the witch who lived here before and all the men's clothes made Kai look like some sort of scroogy old professor. Barf.

So yeah, he tossed all that shit out, then went into the city and dropped a few thousand on groceries and two brand new wardrobes. He has access to all of the Gemini's bank accounts, including the Swiss ones, so he's not really worried about money. Part of him wonders if Bonnie would like his selection, but then he remembers her only choices are to wear what he picked or go naked. Kai decides he'll be fine with either option.

From upstairs, he can hear subtle rustling and murmurs. There's soft thunk, a honey-voiced curse and then another thunk. The shriek of rage and stomping that follows would alert him to her consciousness even without the vampire hearing, but he plates and garnishes her omelette anyway, bringing it to the table as the younger witch thunders down the stairs.

"Where the fuck did you take me? Why can't I leave?"

Ah, the thunking.

"Did you try to sneak out the window?" Kai sucks his teeth in a tsk-tsk-tsk. "Such a bad girl."

Bonnie grinds her teeth and Kai subtly winces at the rough clicking. Jeez, she's gonna fuck her mouth up.

"Fuck you," she grits. "Let me go."

"Nope," he pops the 'P' and grins at her. "Breakfast?"

Bonnie glares at him for a moment, green eyes glittering in rage before she twists on her heel and thunders back upstairs. Kai stares after her dumbly.

"Are you sure you don't want it? The omelettes extra cheesey!" he calls after her. She answers with a slammed door.

* * *

The next few weeks are like the best issue of Spy Vs Spy ever: she tries to escape, he thwarts her, she tries to claw his eyes out, and he drinks her blood until she's once more subdued. Heal. Rinse. Repeat. It was half-amusing, half-infuriating, because, much like her doe-eyed best friend, the witch was pretty resourceful, even without magic. Unlike the other girl, Bonnie wasn't counting on someone else to save her, so she went all in on the recklessness.

Everyday, Bonnie finds some new way to tell him how much she hates him, how he ruined her life, how he made her a bad person. Kai always respond in kind, about how she fucked him over, how she was hypocrite who gave people like Damon Salvatore a chance but ignored it when Kai gave 110 percent to change for the better, how he was glad he wrecked her because she did as much to him.

She doesn't eat or sleep or really relax at all, hypervigilant in her desire to escape. Kai would be mildly concerned about her abandon of self-preservation if he weren't so angry about the cops currently on his front porch.

"Can I help you?" he asks the pair, putting as much of his boyish charm into his voice as possible. They seem unamused.

"We got a call about a possible kidnapping, this the address we tracked."

Kai raises an eyebrow at this. "Well," he starts. "I think there's been a misun-"

"Help!" Bonnie screams from overhead. "Help me please."

Kai steps further out on the porch and looks up with the officers. Bonnie has one of the second story windows open and is waving her arms desperately.

"Please get me out of here!" she shouts. Kai scowls at her as both officers turn to face him. Both are reaching for their closed holsters.

"Bitch," Kai grumbles. He swiftly seizes both cops by their necks and pulls them in, compelling them to believe that a nice young man's petulant fiancee called the cops on him to win their argument. Nothing of actual note. When they drive off, he stares up at Bonnie's crestfallen face.

Seeing him stare at her, the witch flips him the bird and disappears from the window. Kai runs back inside and catches her on the stair landing before she can slam into her room and barricade him out. He has to grit his teeth through the unexpected aneurism she springs on him (and oh, he'll have to deal with that later, reinforce the circle he cast so that she can't work her way out of the block again), but then her tiny hand is pounding on his chest, trying to break free from his grip.

"I hate you!" she snarls. Her voice is thick and there are angry tears stinging her eyes. Her blood is rushing through her exerted body, but Kai thinks the hunger flooding him has more to do with how lovely her face looks in agony.

"What do you want? Why won't you just kill me?" she shrieks. Spittle flies from her mouth and her skin is flushed red. Kai's never seen Bonnie this unhinged. She always metered out her pain and vengeance around him, taking whatever heat boiled beneath the surface and cooling it to a razor's edge. They've cut each other up so much he doesn't think they'll ever recover.

She sags back against the wall so suddenly that Kai almost loses his grip on her shoulder. He helps guide her to the floor as she sobs.

"I hate you," she cries. "I wish you were dead. I wish I never met you."

Kai's jaw clenches but he rolls his eyes and tugs her forward. It goes to show how exhausted she is when she just lets him toss a casual arm over her shoulder.

"I'm glad I met you," he replies. "You're fun. And at least with you, I know there really are good people in the world, not just the fakers like my family produced."

Bonnie just sobs harder. But she lets Kai hold her the entire time and he counts that as a victory.

* * *

Or not.

Bonnie's watching TV. Again. Like some kind of vegetative idiot. Kai hasn't seen a morsel of food pass her lips since she's been here and ever since her breakdown, the closest she's come to eating is her daily intake of alcohol.

It's like she's completely given up on everything and it infuriates Kai because that's not his Bonnie, giving up is not who Bonnie is.

Kai sucks his teeth and comes to stand between Bonnie and the television. She doesn't even move, just stares on blankly at his midsection. Kai looks back at the screen to see she's been passively digesting C-SPAN, which, ugh, boring. Who needs human politics when you're supernatural? Clapping his hands in her face don't merit so much as a blink, so when the wicked thought flitters through Kai's annoyed mind, he latches onto it desperately.

She doesn't protest or tense up when he grabs up her lax form and tosses her over his shoulder. She doesn't even respond when he takes them to the bathroom and shuts the door or turns on the shower. It's not until he has them both under the frigid spray and starts trying to remove her pajamas that she shows any reaction at all.

First, she stiffens under freezing water. Then, when Kai lifts the hem of her tank top, she shoves him. The push is hard enough to make him stumble, but there's no heat behind it and it's not accompanied by an "asshole" or a "stop" and this pisses Kai off even more, because he snatched a Bennett witch, _the Bennett witch_ , and not some lifeless puppet.

So he grips her flannel pajama bottoms and pulls.

* * *

They fight and Kai relishes it, the way she punches and kicks and screams and curses him. It gets him hard because she's back and she's so _alive_ and after this he's going to stuff her full of pizza and burgers and cake and ice-cream, just so that her hip-bones don't jut out so sharply or her ribs don't show so flagrantly. After this, he won't let her leave again, won't let her not be herself.

He doesn't know when _after this_ is. Is it when her attacks become encouragements? When her efforts to stop him from removing her clothes turn into her helping him undress them both? When her aggressive clawing becomes nails raking down his back as she pulls him closer, further inside her, when her mouth meets his in a punishing clash?

Is _after this_ after they hate fuck in a cold shower, mouths stained with blood from too hard kisses and his intersecting appetites? Is _after this_ after she cries his name ("harder, fuck, Kai, _please_ "), after he fills her up with his release, after he tugs her outside to his bed, where they flop messily atop? Is it when he fucks her again on the now-soaked sheets, slower, because he doesn't hate her like she wants him to, because she doesn't desire him like he wants her to, because, because, because…

When will the _after this_ come?

* * *

Kai's not sure what to feel. He's pretty numb when he finds her beneath the shade of the oak the next morning, feet dangling inches above the ground. She's still naked from their love-making - fucking - Kai corrects himself and he wonders how his superior senses didn't tip him off to her leaving his bed. She picked a pretty spot at least - the tree was large and and offered a great view of the rising sun.

When Kai was a child he used to climb it's form with Jo and leap to the ground in attempts to fly. It was a huge thing back then, the fall to the ground felt like it took forever. Over thirty years later, he thinks the height is pretty perfect for hanging oneself. He has to give Bonnie credit for being resourceful even in death - he doubts she suffered. Her neck probably snapped when the rope did. He wonders what happened to the girl who suckled from his wrist like a babe from a teat.

"Pretty birdie broke her wings," he murmurs to himself.

The heretic collects Bonnie's body from the tree. Then he takes her inside and clothes her in one of the dresses he picked out for her, a dark red lace sundress with a low-cut back. He brushes her hair back and wraps it like he'd seen her mother do once during a sleepover with Jo. Then he waits.

It's almost midnight when she sits up, eyes darting around desperately. They stop on him.

"Kai?" she questions. "What did you do? How am I-?"

"Not dead?" he interrupts. "You had my blood in your system."

Bonnie stares at him for a moment then scoffs.

"Of course I fucking did." She sounds bitter, but Kai ignores her tone and hands her one of the blood bags from his stash. Bonnie eyes the crimson plasma, before shaking her head to herself and taking it. The bag is drained in minutes and Bonnie says nothing when Kai grabs her left hand and slips a delicate lapis lazuli ring on an equally delicate finger.

"You planned this," she states. Not questions. Or accuses. Just a calm, blanket statement.

"Not this, exactly," he counters. "But I thought of something like it."

Bonnie stares at him question and he elaborates. "I wasn't going to force you. Just wait out the anger and depression and then later on, I'd gain your trust and suggest it. You'd agree and ride off into the sunset with me."

"I hate you," the words have no bite. They're said more like a counter-argument to his fantasy. Kai shrugs.

"Hey, Stockholm worked for a fairy-tale wildebeest, right? Why not for me?"

Bonnie shakes her head again and looks away from him. "You love me," she murmurs. Again, not a question.

Kai nods. "Pretty sure. I don't really have a frame of reference."

The newborn vampire is quiet. She fiddles with the daylight ring he made her, the one that slipped so easily onto her left ring finger and fit so well.

"Is Elena awake now?" she wonders and Kai shrugs. He hadn't really thought about it.

"Possibly. Probably not. It's more of a soul thing than a death thing. Neither of your souls can exist on the same plane at once. They repel each other. But you did stay dead for a long time, so maybe it did work out."

Bonnie nods then sighs. "I'm hungry," she states. Kai grins.

* * *

There's a very real possibility that one Bonnie Bennett shut off her humanity the night she became a vampire. She doesn't seem to care about going to check if Elena will remain a comatose burden for the rest of eternity, nor did she seem overly concerned about killing and compelling humans. She fucks Kai without guilt, leaves his "I love you"s unreturned, but his dick's sated, so that's probably enough. She didn't delight in the killing or fucking, but there was this widespread indifference that now dominated her personality.

Bonnie was still Bonnie though. She killed quickly, didn't put any effort into taunting prey like Kai did, refused to touch children or people with kids. Abusers and criminals and scumbags were her prey of choice. Humans were to be food or to be punished in her mind. Kai didn't care either way.

They had tossed sticky Jolly-Ranchers at a giant map of the U.S.A. with until one of Bonnie's stuck. Boston becomes their destination to settle down for the next few years. Kai's a bit wary because it takes them a little closer Virginia than he would have liked, but the candy landed where the candy landed. They pack up the clothes he bought them in some old fashioned trunks and harvest the entirety of the farms' yield before driving off.

One night, when they were at a really seedy bar in the outskirts of Oklahoma City, looking for a quick bite, some drunk patron slaps Bonnie's ass (and Kai gets hungry just imaging ripping his hand off), then scoops her up over his shoulder. Bonnie doesn't bother putting in the effort to pretend to fight, which encourages the drunk sleazebag to rub her backside again. Kai finishes his whiskey, then casually follows them outside.

He finds them outside, somewhere between a propane tank and the bar's external storage unit. Bonnie's already got her face buried in one side of the idiot's burly neck and Kai can see the terrified look on his face as he approaches. The heretic laughs and lets his own face transform into the ugly vampiric facade, which freaks out the guy more. He smells the piss the man emits when Kai rips into his neck as well. When he's dead, Kai twists off the offending hand and chucks it, pulling Bonnie into a kiss before it lands wherever.

They fuck right there over the disrespectful idiot's corpse. Bonnie's ridiculously wet and Kai's outrageously hard and the siphon has to laugh when he thinks if this isn't somewhat what the drunk had in mind when he carted Kai's entire life outside to assault.

When they finish, they bury him a few miles away and Kai offers Bonnie the severed hand. She removes one of the rings and slips it over Kai's own finger before tossing the hand in the shallow grave.

Later that night, he fingerfucks her in the backseat and her orgasm soaks his new ring.

* * *

Three months after settling down in Boston, after Bonnie compelled herself into a dance major at Tufts University, after Kai finally, _finally_ gets some kind of happily ever after, fate decides to drop two idiotic Salvatore brothers on his front porch. A scowl mars Kai's handsome face the moment he pulls open the door and finds the two of them there - he knew Massachusetts was too fucking close to Virginia, they should have stayed on the west coast - but he smooths it out quickly.

"Damon! Steven! What a surprise!"

Kai steps out onto the porch with them with an easy grin.

"What can I do for you today?"

"Where's Bonnie?" Damon snaps. "I know you have her."

Kai stares at him drolly. "You can't _have_ a person, Damon, people aren't possessions."

"Where is she?" his former 1994 roommate snaps, stepping in closer. Kai sneers at him, even as Stefan speaks up to diffuse the tension.

"Look, Kai," the younger Salvatore offers. Kai looks him over for the time and concludes that he has some really dreamy eyes. "We didn't come here to fight. We just want to bring our friend home, to make sure she's okay."

Kai chuckles. "Is that right?" he mocks. The heretic tilts his head and regards them, still grinning. "Alright," he says. "Come in."

He steps aside and he sees the brothers cast wary glances at each other before coming inside. They walk past him, looking around the living room with suspicion. Kai smiles the whole time.

What do they think of the home he and Bonnie have built here together? Do they see what Kai sees lining its furnishings? In the warm colors that the walls have been painted? Do they see Kai's victory? How he screwed the Gemini coven and gained his freedom and earned his girl?

Or are they still stupid enough to believe that this is a place where Bonnie's being kept unwillingly?

"Where is she?" Damon demands.

"At school," Kai replies. "She's working on her recital number."

This answer throws Damon. Kai can practically see the record scratching in his head. He wonders what sort of fantasy Damon's built up in his head, what he thinks Bonnie's been up to for the past half-year since the blue-eyed devil abandoned her with a heretic to die?

"Recital?" Stefan questions. Kai nods.

"Yup," he supplies. "She's a dance major."

"You're lying," Damon accuses. Kai feigns hurt.

"Is that what you think?"

"It's what I _know_ ," he snarls. "You're a psycho-freak. There's no way she's off at dance practice, you probably have her chained up in your basement."

At that, the vampire zips off, rather rudely, and bangs his way through Kai's house, calling out for Bonnie. Kai looks after him, bemused.

"Some blood, Steven?" he offers and gestures towards the kitchen.

"It's Stefan," the younger Salvatore replies. "And no thank you." Kai shrugs, ignoring the correction.

"Suit yourself, Steven," he replies and goes to the kitchen anyway. Stefan trails after him awkwardly, watching as he builds a BLT sandwich and pours himself a glass of O-neg by the time Damon is done trashing his home. The other vampire zips back to them, seizing Kai by the collar and making him drop his sandwich on the counter.

Jeez. As if Bonnie wouldn't be irritated enough about their guests, the little clean freak will probably nag him about the mustard on the marble.

"Where the fuck _is she?_ " Damon snarls, shaking him. Kai frowns and shoves him off.

"Why do you care? Aren't you the one who left her to die so you could get your precious girlfriend back?"

"Wait, what?" Stefan straightens up. "You said Kai ran off with her before you got there."

"He's lying," Damon grits, still glaring at Kai. "It's what he does, because he's a _sociopath._ "

"Hey, merging fixed that," Kai defends. "Although, granted, I could have handled my anger at the wedding a little better."

"A little bett-" Stefan goes from gaping incredulously at his brother to gaping incredulously at Kai. Before anyone else can get a word in, the front door slams open and shut. Kai checks his watch.

"Oh," he says. "It's two-thirty. Did I not mention that's when Bon would be back?"

* * *

"Did you eat Mrs. Lowenthal's dog?" Bonnie calls from the hallway. There's a soft thud from her dropping her bag on the armchair in the living room. "The little yappy one?"

"It kept shitting in our flower bed," Kai grumbles back as she walks into the kitchen. The petite woman offers an unsurprised look - Kai recalls Damon's car parked in their driveway- and a small wave to the Salvatores. She casts a displeased look at the mustard on the kitchen counter before swiping up Kai's BLT and finishing it in three bites.

"You can't just eat the neighborhood pets because they annoy you," she scolds. "We're suspicious enough as it is."

"Bonnie," Damon breathes. The woman looks away from Kai to the older the vampire.

"Damon," she answers. The elder Salvatore sweeps her up in a tight embrace then.

"You're okay!"he crows, a bright smile on his face.

He's the only one. Bonnie's expression is disinterested and patient, as though she were waiting out the emotional response (it's eerily similar to the acedia that ruled her in the first few weeks of her vampirism). Kai is frowning at the sight of Bonnie in Damon's arms, and Stefan keeps glancing cautiously between the three, obviously more in-tune with the unfriendly atmosphere than his brother.

Damon releases Bonnie, his hands sweeping over her face, tucking back the red-tinted curls of her new hairstyle, taking in her visage with a near worshipful expression on his own ugly mug. The familiarity of the gesture sets Kai's teeth on edge, because even now he couldn't touch Bonnie with that kind of ease outside of sex.

But the bastard that left her to die could?

"You look -" Damon pauses and frowns. "You look good."

"Thanks," Bonnie removes his hands from her face and lets them drop, moving to stand closer to Kai. She picks up the heretic's discarded glass of blood, draining the last of it. Both Salvatores inhale sharply.

"You're a -," Stefan starts but Bonnie cuts him off with a sharp affirmative.

"Obviously. What do you want? Did Elena send you to find me or did your guilty conscious kick in?" she's addresses Damon. The raven-haired man flinches.

"I've been looking for you for the past six months, okay? Elena's still asleep, she never woke up, and that haunted me because I knew that you were alive and that," he pauses. Takes a breath. "Listen, Bon-Bon, there wasn't a day that went by when didn't think about you. This whole time, thinking you were alive and suffering with this asshole - after what he did to you last time -"

"But..." Bonnie pauses. She seems so unmoved by the conversation, as if she were merely discussing the weekly weather report. "Aren't you the one who left me with him? To die? Did you not expect him to change his mind and save me?"

Damon stares at her, put off by her disinterest. Stefan and Kai are riveted by the melodrama being played out by the oldest and youngest vampire. Bonnie refills the glass with more blood.

"Bonnie," Stefan tries. "Maybe if you come back with us, we can figure something out. We can find a way to wake Elena and cure yo -"

"I'm good, Stefan. Really. And I can't trust you about Elena. If she didn't wake up when I killed myself and became a vampire, she won't wake up until I'm really dead and gone."

Damon steps forward. "That's not -"

"It's not?" Bonnie asks sharply, catching his gaze, her voice colored with an emotion other than polite apathy for the first time. Kai licks his lips in apprehension, eyes darting between the Salvatores. Damon and Bonnie seemed to be caught in some sort of trance, staring at each other. Damon swallows, his eyes falling to the floor.

"Why'd you kill yourself, Bon-Bon?"

He's too busy looking forlornly at the ground to see Bonnie swing her arm to smash her empty glass on his head.

* * *

Things are a bit chaotic after that. Kai ends up using magic to twist Stefan's head about in a complete 360 when the other man grips Bonnie by the arm and hauls her off his wayward brother. Said brother then tries to charge Kai, demanding to know what the hell Kai had done to Bonnie, but he was intercepted by one 5'2" dancer and the meat carving knife she sent sliding between his ribs. Bonnie sharply breaks his neck before he can finish groaning in pain.

When he falls to the floor, Bonnie reaches in his pocket and pull out his keys, sharing a look with Kai.

She grabs her backpack on the way out, which Kai knows already houses her important items and luckily he already has his phone and wallet in his pockets. He can share her charger until they can stop somewhere. They have to take Damon's stupid blue Mustang since it blocked their own car in the garage.

As he drives, he can feel Bonnie growing distant with him again, the woman who came alive as she got to study dance, the woman he had gotten to know as he built a life with her, as he made a home with her, retreating once more behind high walls of apathy and disregard. He palms the back of her neck and drops a kiss on her temple, causing her to look at him in surprise.

"Don't go away again," he pleads, shooting her a pouting glance. "Please?"

Bonnie breathes in deeply. "Okay," she pats the hand on her neck, before dropping both of hers in her lap. Comfortable silence settles between them before Kai breaks it.

"Wanna stop at the store and buy a world map and a bag of Jolly-Ranchers?"

* * *

The Jolly-Rancher lands on Cambodia. They stop at a cafe that advertised free Wi-Fi and Bonnie spends two hours unenrolling herself from school and planning their trip, from booking their tickets to buying their adventure tour and stay package, while Kai stuffs his face with scones.

They steal some basics from a closed Target then drive to Worcester Regional Airport to wait for their flight. They fuck in the cramped backseat of Damon's Mustang, Bonnie riding him in a manner that proves to be an exercise in indulgence. Kai makes her hop off of his dick and rut his face for her last few orgasms so that he can jerk out his own onto the leather seats.

* * *

At their stop-over in Shanghai, Kai finally asks her.

"Why _did_ you kill yourself?"

He sees a businesswoman shoot them an odd look before returning to her book. Bonnie's own expression looks like she's contemplating doing the same.

"Why? You never asked before."

That's because before, Kai had been fixated on the fact that she killed herself the night after they first had sex. He was sure that, whatever her reasons were, a good chunk of them pertained to her hatred for him.

"I didn't think I should," he replies. Bonnie rolls her eyes.

"You don't have to lie. It must have hurt your feelings."

Kai shrugs. "I don't think I should make something like that about me." Bonnie is quiet after that, quiet for so long that Kai thinks she's less thinking about how to answer and more not answering at all, when she finally does speak.

"It was about me. About how I could I feel what I felt about you when you really did destroy my life, about guilt and doing the right thing for Elena and Damon, and everyone else, about how much I hated myself and just needed to escape," she chuckles softly, bitterly. "I forgot I even had your blood in my system. I chose that tree because it was as far as I could leave the house before the magic blocked me. I wanted to be as free as possible. And I wanted to hurt you. So I guess it was about you, too."

Kai lets the heavy silence percolate before he asks his next burning question

"What about after you turned? Did you turn it off?"

Bonnie frowns. "I don't think so? I don't remember making the decision to turn anything off, I think it was just..." she trails off, thinking. "I remember how everyone used to say that things you felt as a vampire were amplified. But the thing is - I didn't feel anything about myself. At all. Not about compulsion or killing people or disgust about being a vampire, none of what I expected to feel. I felt dead.

"I think the only times I felt alive were when I was caught in a moment with you."

* * *

Cambodia is hot and humid and Kai feels dank and gross for the first time since becoming a vampire. Luckily at least, his and Bonnie's undead states means they don't attract mosquitoes like the other tourists do, so hiking through some muggy, foresty mountains stays vastly more pleasant for them.

They snatch and compel a few of their tour mates, carefully taking turns to sneak off and feed. No one is any of the wiser, although people do think there's mild cold floating around that Bonnie and Kai both fake catching.

The adventure package is fun. They zipline, ride elephants, parasail, eat good food - Kai thinks maybe they should have just traveled from the start instead of trying to settle down somewhere.

On their last night, they stay in a villa outside the Angkor Wat temple and Kai decides to take Bonnie on a paddle boat ride in the lake around it. The temple is lit up with soft purple and pink lights - someone's wedding or something - and instrumental music gently floats through the air. Kai feels a sort of peace he thinks he hasn't felt in a long time, not since his soul still just a particle of light, still unsplinterd from hers. Bonnie sits in his lap, leaning her back into his chest, watching the lights shimmer on the temple's face and enjoying the music with him. Kai intertwines his left fingers with hers.

"Hey," he rumbles against her ear. "We should do this for a while."

"Paddle boat?"

He pinches her thigh with his free hand.

"Stay together."

Bonnie entwines their right hands and tugs his arms around her more securely. "Forever," she promises.


End file.
